Leontyne Price. (Editor's Choice).(Rediscovered)(Sound Recording Review)

[] "REDISCOVERED" Arias by Handel, Giordano, Puccini, Gershwin, Cilea; songs by Brahms, Poulenc, Barber, Hoiby; spirituals. With Garvey, piano. Texts and translations. RCA 63908

To those who know her repertoire, the program for Price's Carnegie Hall recital debut (February 28, 1965, just days after her thirty-eighth birthday) may look predictable: even Poulenc's songs, an unusual choice for other singers, already had been explored by the soprano (on her 1957 album, A Program of Song, RCA 61499). But from her first note--a perfectly floated E, launching Handel's "Care selve"--Price announced that nothing about this evening would be ordinary.

That note will take your breath away, and you can hear it now, because RCA has released, for the first time, a recording of the entire performance. (The tapes lay untouched and apparently forgotten until a few years ago, when the company included Brahms's Zigeunerlieder and Cilea's "Io son l'umile ancella" on a retrospective compilation; nobody seems to know why the complete recital never appeared before now.) Automatically, Leontyne Price Rediscovered leaps to the forefront of all-time great recital albums. Her program is perfectly chosen, her encores brilliant, her Southern sweet-talk just sufficient to give the listener an idea of her charm. Recorded sound is remarkably clear and warm, as if Price were in one's living room, and she is in phenomenally good voice, with the result that one may feel one is "rediscovering" Price every time one hears the album.

The sheer beauty of her voice, like a shimmering velvet cloak that envelops the listener, registers almost as a surprise. ("Surely my memory lies," one thinks; "no voice can have been that gorgeous." Well, yes, actually, Price's can be--and it is.) Fully in command of her technique, she moves gracefully through a wide-ranging repertoire, including several numbers she never recorded anywhere else. She sounds as fully engaged dramatically in this recital as she did in her best stage roles, and her lieder and songs are, for the most part, personal and insightful. She allows simpler material to speak for itself, and she finds freshness even in the most familiar music.

She begins with three Handel numbers, and here the surprise comes from hearing such a big, meaty soprano voice in this music, rather than the spun-sugar type that dominated Baroque repertory for decades. At this point in her career, Price boasted ...